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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26287762">Hot Chocolate in the Grand Place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk'>Muccamukk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Band of Brothers (TV 2001)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bakery and Coffee Shop, Canon Era, F/M, Fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:41:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,805</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26287762</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <q>It's on an afternoon like that, one in the early days of summer, when the shop is half an hour from closing, that Eugene finds her.</q>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Renee LeMaire/Eugene Roe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hot Chocolate in the Grand Place</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintagelavenderskies/gifts">vintagelavenderskies</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hand waves quite a bit of actual history, but I am unconcerned.</p><p>Thank you to Anthrobrat for beta reading.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After dinner on Christmas Eve, Anna begs Renée to come on a walk with her. She hesitates, thinking of the men lying in the church—each one wanting a soft touch and a kind word above all else, save maybe death—but she's been working that improvised ward for eighteen hours, and Renée needs to see the sky.</p><p>She goes with Anna, and they're just outside the limits of the town, peering at the gaps in the clouds, trying to name the stars when they hear the bombers.</p><p>Anna runs back to the church, runs into the flames to save her patients, will later earn a medal for her bravery. Renée is not so bold. She will treat the burns, after, but not face the fire. When it's over, she bandages Anna's hands and will not meet her eye.</p><p>"It's all right, my girl," Anna tells her. "It's all right."</p><p>Coming from Anna, Renée almost believes it.</p><p>They spend Christmas tending the men who survived the air raid. Renée is too busy to do more than glance at Eugene in passing when he brings her more wounded, now laid out in the street like animals. She wishes she could go to him, to sit next to him and soak in his calm, but there isn't time to do more than exchange glances, the shadow of a smile. He ducks his head, like she's given him something priceless with just her eyes, and for a moment her heart glows.</p><p>The day after, the Americans come. More Americans, with tanks, and soldiers in uniforms with thread left in them, and a whole medical corps.</p><p>Just like that, it's over. The Army doctors and crisp American nurses take care of Renée's wounded boys.</p><p>"You can go home now," one of the girls in starched white tells her. She's dark-haired like Eugene and doesn't look old enough to be out of school, let alone fighting a war on foreign soil.</p><p>"I am..." Renée says, but then she looks around at the ruins of Bastogne. The fire has left nothing. "I am not sure where that is."</p><p>The girl, the nurse, she supposes, pats Renée's wrist and gives her the sort of practised, sympathetic smile that all nurses learn. "Oh, you poor thing," she says. "You've been through so much."</p><p>Renée ducks her head and thinks of Eugene.</p><p>She doesn't see him before someone puts her and the other civilians on a transport truck to France. It takes her a week to get to Brussels, and when she does, she finds that everyone thought she was dead. Matron offers her the job at the hospital back, and Renée sees that life spread before her: the same job, the same apartment, the same world as before, like the siege had never happened.</p><p>"I don't think I can be a nurse any more, ma'am," she says, and finds work in a cafe.</p><p>Winter turns to spring, which turns to early summer. Renée leaves the cafe for the patisserie across the street. "Viviane's" it's called, though another name is blacked out, visible in outline under the new paint. Viviane doesn't say what it was before her time. She's thirty-five and already dying her hair a shocking red and treating everyone like her daughters.</p><p>Renée learns to make bonbons and decorate chocolates and roll the thinnest sheets of marzipan around pillars of whipped cream. When she tries one, the sugary bite of the almonds gives way to the purest delight of buttery air. She loves how the sweets make people smile, especially children.</p><p>In the afternoon, the sun glances low through the windows. Viviane sends her out to clean them until the glass is almost a mirage that makes the golden light merely hesitate before it floods the shop. Renée thinks giddily that no harm could come to anyone inside those doors, surrounded by the smells of chocolate and sugar and the laughter of pink-cheeked girls who know the war is over and a world of possibility spreads before them. They're going to forget about the occupation and rebuild Belgium from the ashes, a dozen profiteroles at a time.</p><p>It's on an afternoon like that, one in the early days of summer, when the shop is half an hour from closing, that Eugene finds her.</p><p>The bell chimes, and Renée looks up, expecting a regular. Time freezes in that moment, and her heart jumps into her throat. There he stands, his cap still on until he catches himself and slides it off his dark hair and twists it between her his hands. He's a new man now: colour in his cheeks, which are freshly shaved, and none of that gauntness of a soldier under siege. Eugene's dark eyes aren't bloodshot, and his hands are clean.</p><p>"Can I help you?" Viviane asks in stilted English, and Eugene opens his mouth and then closes it, his eyes still fixed on Renée. Viviane follows his glance and raises a plucked and pencilled eyebrow. "Would you like to take a break, my dear?" she asks Renée.</p><p>Renée murmurs thanks, quickly takes off her apron, and then slides her hands over her head. She's wearing a kerchief here, too, and suddenly she thinks what a shame it is that he's never seen her hair loose.</p><p>Eugene still hasn't said anything, but he follows her out again, and across the street to the cafe where Renée used to work. They sit on iron chairs that rock on the cobblestones and stare at each other. Renée knows that Viviane will be watching them, and so she sits with her back to the patisserie.</p><p>"How did you find me?" Renée asks.</p><p>Eugene lifts one shoulder minutely. "Asked at the hospitals until I found someone who knew you." He still has that soft, low voice that had felt like the Balm of Gilead rubbed into her soul.</p><p>She leans instinctively towards him, so close that their foreheads are almost touching. To Viviane, they must look as if they're about to kiss, but that's not what Renée means in that moment. All she wants is to soak him in, like a sponge cake drizzled with melted honey.</p><p>"I needed to see you again," he tells her.</p><p>Renée nods. She doesn't have to ask why. They are each other's only memory of hope in the dark. </p><p>"Are you free?" She asks, and then on his frown, switches to French and adds, "I mean, are you out of the army? Are you going home?"</p><p>The girl who replaced Renée in the cafe, Madeleine comes before he can answer. Eugene looks startled, having forgotten where they were, but orders hot chocolate for both of them.</p><p>"Not free yet," he tells Renée in English. "Just on leave, but soon."</p><p>He used his leave to search every hospital in Brussels for a nurse who might or might not be there. The impossibility of it rocks her back in her chair. She feels as though she should apologise for not having written, as she could have, but doesn't want regrets to stand between them this first time together again. Besides, it's too hard to explain the fear of sending a letter and receiving no reply and wondering what that could mean. He could have died the day after she left, and she would never have known. "I'm glad you came," she says.</p><p>He nods again, and smiles shyly, more a gleam in his eye than an alteration in his mouth. "Soon," he says again.</p><p>"And you will go back, to"—she searches her mind for the place, a land only conjured by his words, never even searched for on a map—"Louisiana?"</p><p>"Yes." He won't commit to more than that.</p><p>She wonders, if she asked him, would he stay in Europe for her? She glances down the street to the gleaming gilt roofs of Brussels' grand marketplace, and the thousand years of history there, and wonders what it would be like to live in a place as new as America. "And what will you do there? Use your hands to heal?"</p><p>He looks away, shoulders raising as his hands tighten. She takes his hands in hers, smooths over the knuckles. They're still rough with work, but no longer torn by the cold, and there's no blood ground into them. Hers have grown smooth, and she has a streak of icing across the back of one, but nothing worse than that. Would she be able to be a doctor's wife, and live only one remove from all the death that came with her husband's work?</p><p>"No," he says finally. "You were right. I want to build something, I think."</p><p>Renée nods. "So do I," she says, cautiously. The possibility planted by that builds between them, not budding quite yet, but living in potential.</p><p>His movements sudden, almost jerky, Eugene pulls his hands away. He bends and fishes something out of his pants pocket. Renée's heart stops, and for a moment she expects a ring. Her mind tells her that this is all far too fast, while her heart beats like the wings of a lark, full of hope. She feels dizzy. But the velvet box is too big to be a ring. He shoves it across the table at Renée and looks at her with serious eyes.</p><p>She hesitates, thumbs tracing the corners of the box. She knows that by opening it, she's committing herself, not necessarily to bind herself to him, but to making a choice as to what path she wants to start down: one with Eugene, or one here in Belgium.</p><p>Renée opens the box. It contains a thin golden chain with a single diamond winking at the end. Her breath catches and she leans down to study the thousand colours glimmering in its depth. "Where did you get this?" She demands, and then wishes she could take the words back.</p><p>Eugene shrugs. "Berchtesgaden."</p><p>He's travelled so much since she's seen him, but that doesn't matter. It's not the gem in front of her, or his promise of quite literally building a new life together, it's the way he's looking at her. His eyes are so full of longing, and it's seeing her that put it there, even after everything.</p><p>"This Louisiana," Renée says, again hesitating over the pronunciation of the name, imagining a life full of American sounds, even with Eugene's soft French to come home to, "it has patisseries, I suppose?"</p><p>"Yes," Eugene tells her, "Or it will when you get there."</p><p>The hot chocolate comes then, and they drink it in silence, staring at each other as the sun sinks over the Grand Place. Renée pushes her kerchief off, and shakes her hair so it falls around her shoulders, and Eugene smiles, and they both drink their chocolate, tasting the sweet along with the bitter.</p>
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